Wide-area Data Services playing an important role in 2008 Olympics

A story recently surfaced about how Cisco is providing the IP video network infrastructure to a major network broadcast station during the network's coverage of the 2008 Olympics.  This is a very cool story that demonstrates how silicon valley is once again strutting its stuff in the world spotlight.  While Cisco's WAAS product was mentioned in this story as optimizing only a fraction of the Cisco network and providing 140Mbps performance out of 35Mbps of bandwidth, this 4X of relatively small improvement is not what I am writing about here.

The story I am focusing on is the fact that the Riverbed product Marketing Manager Joe Ghory, is enroute to Beijing where he will be commentating and assisting with the coverage of rowing for one of the major American television networks and thanks to the Riverbed Steelhead Mobile software, he will be getting world-class acceleration while he is connected.

So how did a Riverbed marketing guy get the opportunity to report on the Olympics?  It turns out that Joe has an illustrious career in rowing where he competed at a high level during his tenure at Cambridge University in the UK and as a member of the perenially dominant University of California's rowing team.  As a rowing expert, Joe will be providing keen insight into the sport from the perspective of someone that has competed at a very high level.

So how does Riverbed Steelhead Mobile software fit into this story?  There are actually two specific tie-ins.  The first is that Joe happens to be the Product Marketing Manager for Steelhead Mobile.  The second is that Joe will be relying on his Steelhead Mobile optimized laptop connection to overcome the performance problems when connecting back to the Riverbed corporate infrastructure, which sits more than 6,000 miles away in San Francisco.

Stay tuned for blogs from Joe where he will be reporting back not only about his Olympics experience as it pertains to his duties on and off the air, but also the results of his optimized and accelerated performance with his Steelhead Mobile equipped laptop. 

Good luck Joe and good luck Steelhead Mobile!

Comments

[Billy]

That's really cool! Is Joe's commentary on NBC's or BBC's website?